A groundbreaking approach to martial arts combining Self-Image Psychology and Qigong. Martial arts teacher Phillip Starr draws on more than sixty years of experience to introduce the Mirror Image Technique--a method that recognizes the reinforcing nature of body and mind. Our self-image expresses in how we stand, move, and hold ourselves in the world; and in martial arts, the way we move reflects the way we think on the mat, in practice, and when sparring. Here, Starr (...) pulls from Self-Image Psychology and Qigong to offer readers a unique set of physical exercises that can be applied to any martial art tradition--as well as our personal lives. Like two mirrors facing each other, the physical body both reflects and changes the mind, and vice versa: our physical movements become more than just the consequence of our intentions or thoughts. As we adjust the way we move, we adjust the way we think: about ourselves, our lives, and our environments. Unlike other self-help books that consider the mind as the sole gateway to change, the Mirror Image Technique shows that cognitive transformation starts with the body. Starr takes readers through: Demonstrating key principles of Qigong with exercises like The Unbreakable Arm and The Unliftable Body Improving your stance Increasing your strike force Insights into the mindset for breaking boards (tameshiwari). Intended to enhance growth and personal development, the techniques in Martial Arts and the Mirror Image lead to a renewal of confidence and enthusiasm for one’s particular practice. (shrink)

A groundbreaking approach to martial arts combining Self-Image Psychology and Qigong. Martial arts teacher Phillip Starr draws on more than sixty years of experience to introduce the Mirror Image Technique--a method that recognizes the reinforcing nature of body and mind. Our self-image expresses in how we stand, move, and hold ourselves in the world; and in martial arts, the way we move reflects the way we think on the mat, in practice, and when sparring. Here, Starr (...) pulls from Self-Image Psychology and Qigong to offer readers a unique set of physical exercises that can be applied to any martial art tradition--as well as our personal lives. Like two mirrors facing each other, the physical body both reflects and changes the mind, and vice versa: our physical movements become more than just the consequence of our intentions or thoughts. As we adjust the way we move, we adjust the way we think: about ourselves, our lives, and our environments. Unlike other self-help books that consider the mind as the sole gateway to change, the Mirror Image Technique shows that cognitive transformation starts with the body. Starr takes readers through: • Demonstrating key principles of Qigong with exercises like The Unbreakable Arm and The Unliftable Body • Improving your stance • Increasing your strike force • Insights into the mindset for breaking boards (tameshiwari). Intended to enhance growth and personal development, the techniques in Martial Arts and the Mirror Image lead to a renewal of confidence and enthusiasm for one’s particular practice. (shrink)

We have argued that it is rational to have asymmetric attitudes toward prenatal and posthumous non-existence insofar as this asymmetry is a special case of a more general asymmetry in our attitudes toward past and future pleasures. Here we respond to an interesting critique of our view by Jens Johansson. We contend that his critique involves an inappropriate conflation of the time from which the relevant asymmetry emerges and the time of the badness of death.

In the article two viewpoints on the mind’s influence on perception are considered. One of them was developed on the assumption that perception is a nonproblematic source of knowledge about the world, which is free from mind’s influence— perception as a mirror-image. Another viewpoint is perception as action, i.e. active search and gathering the relevant information, its processing and evaluation. First viewpoint has dominated in philosophy for a long time, the second one has been developing in psychology from (...) the 80th of the 20th century. The aim of the paper is to examine some philosophically significant corollaries from both positions concerning objectiveness, epistemological status of an observation, truth, meaning of name. Analysis showed that perception as action is non-compatible with many traditional concepts, and it goes both against empiricism and against realism as it involves some critical arguments, e.g. theory ladenness of observations, underdetermination of theory by facts, the historical development of a scientific fact. (shrink)

The author thinks d m armstrong has correctly explicated his own earlier analysis but that his criticisms are unfounded. The position armstrong takes is actually analogous to the author's in terms of right-Left distortion in mirrors. The author concludes that armstrong should say what "people are doing if they are not perceiving" which would take him into the "quagmire of sense-Data theories." (staff).

How can human experience, vibrant with colours, sounds, flavours, emotions and meanings, arise from the skeletal dance of matter depicted in the physical sciences? Today the mind-body problem confronts not only metaphysicians and moral philosophers, but also workers in the fields of cognitive science, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Paul Marshall offers a radical solution to the mind-body problem by rejecting the idea of a purely material world and asserting instead the primacy of experience. As many have recognized before, experience is (...) not reducible to material bodies and processes alone. Marshall goes a step further and suggests that the matter investigated by modern science corresponds to structural features of an experiential universe that supports and includes our familiar experiences. Utilizing clues furnished by mystical experience and responding to a challenge posed by the physics of motion, Marshall takes up Leibniz's philosophy of 'living mirrors' and arrives at a holistic world-picture that has suggestive links with quantum physics and the visionary cosmologies of East and West. (shrink)

As a means of overcoming the "Third Man" argument, several commentators have developed an influential theory of the relationship between Platonic Forms and particulars based on Plato's use of "image" analogies. This essay explores the viability of this "image-analogy" hypothesis and, in particular, examines an important, but neglected, argument advanced by R. E. Allen intent on establishing an ontological distinction between an image and its object-source.

As a means of overcoming the "Third Man" argument, several commentators have developed an influential theory of the relationship between Platonic Forms and particulars based on Plato's use of "image" analogies. This essay explores the viability of this "image-analogy" hypothesis and, in particular, examines an important, but neglected, argument advanced by R. E. Allen intent on establishing an ontological distinction between an image and its object-source.

This essay will attempt a line-by-line reading of Lacan’s famous “The Mirror Image as Formative I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” (1949) published in the collected volume of essays, Ecrits (1966). The article attempts to show that Lacan’s essay opens a space of primordiality, whereby we can revisit Heidegger’s critique of subjectivity and the Cogito, terms that originate with Descartes and evolves to Kant’s Critiques of dogmatic metaphysics, particularly in Heidegger’s Being and Time. These are steps Heidegger (...) takes to set up his attempted critique of Hegel, who in turn tries to surpass the history of philosophy rooted in modern subjectivity, particularly in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). However, missing in Lacan’s essay and what remains unarticulated in Heidegger’s Being and Time is the following: relation between time, movement, and the space of primordiality where all notions of factical existence dissolve. Being born in time, developing in time, being in or at time, and being-towards-death, as Heidegger struggles to deconstruct – by way of his unique appropriation of phenomenology in Being and Time – can be questioned. Indeed, what Heidegger fails to develop, and he admits it explicitly, is the other side of his ‘one-sided’ treatment in the investigation: he only analyzed death as a possibility of Dasein’s greatest possibility to ‘be-Whole’ authentically (1962, 277) and completely neglected ‘being-towards-birth’ as the ‘other end’ of Dasein’s movement (1962, 425). We will argue that one is never born as a biological fact of existence, a social construction assigned at physical birth, like a gender or sex, or any religious notions of a created being from God the Creator, or any notions of rebirth, reincarnation, or resurrection, namely from religions in the West, like Roman Catholic Christianity, and the East, like Hinduism. Rather, ‘being-towards-birth’ in relation to the linear time of flowing now-points (past as no longer now, present as now, future as yet to be now), or ‘being-within-time,’ (Heidegger 1962, 457) is temporalized other than a dateable origin in spatialized time or history. (shrink)

Between 1899 and 1906, Alexander Bogdanov developed a scientific philosophy intended to substantiate the basic principle of historical materialism—the idea that existence determines consciousness—in terms of the most advanced science and empiricist epistemology/ontology of his day. At the same time, however, he strove ‘to answer the broad needs of our workers for an overall worldview’, and in the process of doing so he elaborated a complete philosophical system and a holistic worldview. Although his intention was to serve the proletariat and (...) advance socialist revolution, Bogdanov also provided the sort of integral vision of the interconnectedness of the individual, society, and the cosmos that the Russian intelligentsia had traditionally pursued. Bogdanov adopted a number of the principles of nineteenth-century German and Russian idealism, including the concept of the unity of the subject and the object and the ideas that the laws of thought are the same as the laws of being, that there is no qualitative difference between humans and nature, and that humanity is central in the progressive development of the cosmos. Bogdanov, however, provided a materialist mirror image of the idealist worldview. While Russian idealists celebrated spirituality, individual personhood, freedom, and religion, Bogdanov advocated materialism, collectivism, determinism, and naturalism. (shrink)

The contention in this paper is that the theological-political disputes Spinoza was concerned with 350 years ago are similar to the conspiratorial disputes we experience today. The world in Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus, a political intervention in his time, serves as a “mirror image”, that is to say, it deals with the same problem we face today albeit in a different mode. Understanding our contemporary condition under the auspices of a Spinozist perspective, problems in countermeasures to the conspiratorial disputes (...) come to light. Scholarly work and practice focus on the epistemological dimension of conspiracy theories, tying in the extent to which they are problematic to the degree in which they deal in untruth. However, the lesson from Spinoza’s analysis of the theological-political disputes is that such theories do not deal in truth, but, in affect, they do not spring from a lack of education but a lack of certainty. The work of Spinoza opens up a different approach, and if our aim is like that of the TTP, to defend political life against the threat of civil war, such a different approach is in order. (shrink)

Observational drawing provides a means of focusing on anomalous infant bodies. Time required by drawing connects the artist to the humanity of the subjects rather than to the deformities that make them, initially, frightening.

In this article, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault's first published piece, “Introduction to Binswanger's Dream and Existence“ in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn't received much critical attention, is of particular interest because, whereas OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of “Man” as an empirico‐transcendental double in particular, IB views “existential anthropology” as a unique opportunity to establish a new (...) and fruitful relation between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object, “Menschsein”, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault, existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault's later view. (shrink)

La notion de personnalité de l’État est une notion originale apparue pour penser l’unité de volonté et de représentation d’un corps collectif. La théorie de la personnalité de l’État ne se conçoit que dans une relation étroite avec la théorie moderne de la représentation telle qu’on la trouve formulée chez Hobbes notamment. La représentation n’est pas ici la répétition d’une volonté préexistante, mais la production de l’unité même du représenté. Ainsi comprise, la théorie de la personnalité de l’État a remplacé (...) l’ancienne théorie des deux corps du roi qui permettait de penser la permanence de l’institution monarchique par-delà la contingence de ses incarnations concrètes. Mais elle remplit une fonction analogue qui est de permettre de penser la continuité d’une volonté collective, celle de l’État, par-delà les discontinuités de ses représentations concrètes. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the relation between phenomenology and anthropology by placing Foucault?s first published piece, Introduction to Binswanger?s?Dream and Existence? in dialectical tension with The Order of Things. I argue that the early work, which so far hasn?t received much critical attention, is of particular interest because while OT is notoriously critical of anthropological confusions in general, and of?Man? as an empirico-transcendental double in particular, IB views?existential anthropology? as a unique opportunity to establish a new and fruitful relation (...) between transcendental forms and empirical contents. This is because IB focuses on a specific object,?Menschsein?, which is neither the transcendental subject nor an empirical being. Thus for the young Foucault existential anthropology occupies a fertile methodological middle ground between transcendental approaches and empirical forms of analysis. I first interpret anthropology in the light of phenomenology and defend the view that Menschsein is neither a transcendental structure nor a concrete particular, but as the instantiation of the first in the second. I argue that for anthropology to yield the full theoretical benefits Foucault claims for it, the particular cases of Menschsein examined in existential analysis have to be regarded as exemplary. I then read phenomenology back in the light of anthropology and examine how, for Foucault, the analysis of Menschsein in dreams benefits fundamental ontology by affording us a clearer view of some of the main existentiale than the focus on everyday waking experience in Being and Time. Finally, I turn to the limits and difficulties of this early position and my reading of it, and to their consequences for Foucault?s later view. (shrink)

A mirror image is not an image of a thing seen, but that thing seen in a different perspective.

Reflection names the central activity of Western philosophical practice; the mirror and its attendant metaphors of reflection are omnipresent in the self-image of Western philosophy and in metaphilosophical reflection on reflection. But the physical experiences of being reflected by glass mirrors have been inadequately theorized contributors to those metaphors, and this has implications not only for the self-image and the self of philosophy but also for metaphilosophical practice. This article begins to rethink the metaphor of reflection anew. (...) Paying attention to the history of the glass mirror in Europe reveals and challenges the modern emergence of clear ontological distinctions between disembodied subjects and the objects of their knowledge, and suggests a compelling terrain of metaphilosophical analysis. On the reading offered by the article, the inherent complexity of the relationship between selves and their mirror images, a complexity mediated by social location, historical situation, and particular projects, points to significant spaces of unknowing, of indeterminacy, and of ontological ambiguity. (shrink)

Umberto Eco argues that a mirror image is not a sign. At best it is a double, a thing that ceases to be once the reflected object is removed. Harry Mulisch narratively suggests that mirror images function metaphorically as gateways between human suffering and the divine. And interestingly, science employs mirrors and mirror images both to turn our gaze upwards and to show us reflections of our place in the cosmos. Tying together Eco's notion of the (...) double, Mulisch's insistence that mirror images reflect humanity's construction of the divine, and the Giant Magellan Telescope Project's cosmic images, it is my contention that modern, telescopic mirror images are much more than snapshots of the cosmos. They are constructions of human and divine meaning that—signifying—pose the question, what is reflected: the cosmos or humanity? (shrink)

God in the Mirror reconsiders the place of law in the existing bodies of knowledge. Navigating the texts of Ovid, Augustine, Roman jurists, medieval canon lawyers, Freud, Lacan, the notebooks of Leonardo de Vinci, and the paintings of Rene Magritte, this is a crucial landmark within Legendre's reconsideration of a 'revolution of interpretation'.

Introduction. Dying to see -- The anthropomorphic image : negotiations of space between body and landscape -- The imperfect replica : departures and arrivals from Naples to Nagasaki -- The visionary image : the return of the image from Brazil to Rome -- The utopic image : unsettling circuits between Chile and Rome -- Epilogue : The proliferation of the body : Francis Xavier in Goa.

The paper focuses on the problematic of selfinterpretation and the correspondence between selfimage and the reality. Its presupposition is, that a human being is not committed to a single way of life, fully determined by his/her biological characteristics or by the dictate of his/her social background; first of all, he/she is not dependent on single ways of the interpretation of the world or of his/her selfinterpretation. It is his/her ability to accept certain characteristics as his/her own that makes him/her a (...) human being. There is usually a distinction between his/her own seeing himself/herself, which does not necessarily, leads to a failure. The strategies of survival are various and they need not to be rooted in true interpretations in all their aspects. In conclusion the author argues, that the critical thinking making its way into everyday life as well as into the public sphere offers the possibility of the variability of the ways of life and of a consensual coexistence on the basis of manifold interpretative structures and models. Enforcing a uniform view as a presupposition of human cooperation is replaced by an approach, respecting the legitimacy of the pluralistic image of the world and of the humans, for which this approach makes no obstacle in cooperative working of society. (shrink)